Ukrainian Information Policy Minister Yuriy Stets has confirmed that two journalists of the Russian TV channel LifeNews, correspondent Yelizaveta Khramtsova and camera operator Natalya Kalysheva, were deported from Ukraine on Jan. 30.
“This is not a freedom of speech violation, is it? The so-called
journalists from Russia’s LifeNews have been politely kicked out of the
Ukrainian territory through the Synkivka checkpoint on the
Ukrainian-Russian border, with a ban on entering Ukraine for the next
five years,” Stets said on Facebook.
It was reported earlier that the Ukrainian Security Service had
detained a LifeNews filming crew for what it described as activities
harming Ukraine’s national interests and unrelated to journalism.
“I confirm that Ukrainian Security Service officials have detained
two LifeNews journalists in Kyiv. Their permits to stay in Ukraine have
been cancelled and they will be expelled from the Ukrainian territory in
the near future. They will also be barred from entering Ukraine for
five years,” Markiyan Lubkivsky, an adviser to the Ukrainian Security
Service chief, told Interfax.
Lubkivsky did not specify under what circumstances the journalists were detained.
The Russian Foreign Ministry demanded that the LifeNews journalists detained in Kyiv be immediately freed.
